Before I went to work today I had a chance to read some of the Daily Illini. There’s a career fair going on. Steelers won the Super Bowl. A U of I professor is nominating George Ryan for the Nobel Peace Prize, and a student apparently disagrees with this support. However, my favorite piece today was written by a freshman psychology student named Jerry. I’ve never read anything by this kid before, but apparently he has some pretty extreme opinions. Today’s was all about the big bad world of pornography, a world where even soft core porn can make you kill and rape nearly a hundred women. In his column, Jerry writes all about “the good old days” when porn wasn’t corrupting society and “reducing our personhood.” He implies that aggressive sex is without question demeaning and abusive, especially towards women. He also seems to think we should be shocked when we hear that porn “is intended to stimulate the sexual interest of viewers.”
I don’t like this one bit, friends. Rather, I don’t like that Jerry didn’t think any of this through, especially considering pornography’s incredibly long history. The first argument of Jerry’s that I would like to discuss is pornography’s threat to intimacy in relationships. Now, it could be that Jerry never heard of the Kama Sutra, but this ancient Indian text originally written in Sanskrit was created and has been used for centuries by couples to actually increase intimacy in relationships. In my research on this book, it seems most scholars agree that this book was written in the third century by an Indian sage named Vatsyayana. Third Century. So um … it’s been around just as long as scripture and it’s still kickin’ today and has been translated into tons of different languages. To quote a site that gives a brief history of the Kama Sutra, “…in order for marriages to be happy, both man and woman should be well-versed in the arts of pleasure, both carnal and cerebral,” and that, “…it is a far cry from the monogamous and dutiful tomes that Westerners produced as part of the proliferation of advice manuals in the Victorian era.”
Jerry asks, “What kind of society would allow its inhabitants to be forced to view such inappropriate images?”
Well, Jerry, afraid that the written texts wouldn’t survive, Indian temples were decorated with people having sex to ensure some longevity. In Greece, porn was actually used as a form of advertising on brothels to show what was going down on the inside. Yeah, it turns out that people have been having sex since the beginning! If you look at ancient Bibles written in Greek, they too mention the word porn! Well, “porne,” to be precise, and while the Bible may not condone pornography, it certainly proves that it is not a new invention.
If you have the time, I highly recommend checking out the website for a sex museum in Tongli, China. There you can find out about a 9,000 year history of sex through what I call artwork but what Jerry would refer to simply as porn. One of the first images I found on the site is of a jug from ca. 3000 BC which has images of a vulva all over it.
When I visited the Beate Uhse Erotic Museum in Berlin I saw many fantastic works that all display sex in some shape or form. Among my favorites was a porcelain cat that, when you look at it from underneath, is actually concealing two people having sex. What I found incredibly interesting was scroll upon scroll of drawings of Chinese men with penises enlarged to comical proportions. It appears that people have been interested not only in having sex but also in displaying images of sex across the centuries and across the entire world.
Jerry mentions the Dick Van Dyke show from the 1960s, stating that Dick and his wife wouldn’t sleep in the same bed onscreen. Well, first, porn existed in the 1960s too, and you can see this at this website specializing in “vintage” pornography. Jerry says that pornography alters our perceptions of what is normal. Well, if living in a world where I can’t sleep in the same bed as the person I’m married to, well, I don’t know why anyone would want to be normal. Personally, having had sex, I enjoy it quite a bit. And knowing this, I don’t think I would give it up so I can conform to what television censors defined as normal in the 1960s. But maybe that’s just me.
Jerry poses another question, this time when it comes to the objectification of women. Yes, women are posed as sexual objects in porn. Men, in turn, want to have sex with women. Women have the power to deny men sex, and therefore they have control over them. Now, I know what you’re thinking Jerry, that this automatically means men will just overpower the women and rape them. Now, as it turns out, rape is more often than not linked to a person wanting to prove they have power and control over something, and not about the act of sex. Admittedly, I have not read much of the literature that states this, but I have listened to lectures about this by quite a few psychology, gender and women’s studies, history, and community health professors here at U of I, but maybe they’re all full of shit. Watching porn does not make you a rapist, Jerry. If anything it provides an outlet for sexual frustration. Can someone please do the math and compare the amount of rape being done by people who watch pornography that objectifies women (such as many male students at U of I) to that of, oh I don’t know, the amount of rape being done in Africa by men who don’t have access to some of my favorite sites like XTube and Cam4? If someone could get on that I would really appreciate it.
But you know what, Jerry, if you think the world would be better without porn that objectifies women, please, get rid of it. However, I’m sure that gay porn must be alright with you because there’s no objectification of women.
Oh, did someone fail to mention that Hugh Hefner went to school here at U of I before the publication of his little magazine called Playboy? You’ve probably sat in one of the same seats that he has in Lincoln Hall. Careful, Jerry, you might want to start wearing rubber pants or you may catch his cooties which are bound to be lingering all over this campus.
There’s one bit of fact that you touched on in your article, Jerry, and it’s that pornography yields more pornography. Have you noticed that as technology advances, so does sex? It was written about in manuals such as the Karma Sutra and carved into stone. You can see it on ancient vases, you can find it in scrolls. Photography came along and it lived alongside Dick Van Dyke. With video came pornographic films. You could have phone sex on the phone. You can listen to it on a cassette. Jerry, you can even pay to have text message sex on your little iPhone. Yes, sex is ever-expanding and always entertaining because, whether you like it or not, sex feels good. Sex makes people happy. Sex allows us to show love for another human being in physical means. It allows us to show lust for another human being in the same way. Sex is nothing to be ashamed about, and I’ll be damned if I stand silently while a freshman who has done no research on the topic proclaims to an entire university that pornography is the reason for all things bad in the world. I could go on, but it’s 3 AM and pointing out more facts about the history of pornography won’t actually change your mind about anything. There will always be the people in the world who tell you that things that bring you pleasure are morally wrong. Well, Jerry, I’m going to continue my sinful life the way I see fit, and I guarantee you that shortly after I finish writing this rant, I will masturbate to porn being broadcast to me on high-speed wireless internet. I’ll orgasm, and you know what, I’ll go to bed with a smile on my face.
Cheers.
